


wanted

by elizajane



Series: and behold, it was so very good [7]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 11:01:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20096179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: "I once wrote a book about how much I want you," Aziraphale admits, pushing himself up into Crowley's weight above him. "Only God knows how many pages there truly are. I filled it twice over, and twice over again waiting for you."





	wanted

**Author's Note:**

> Follows directly from [homecoming](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19992973).
> 
> Love and kisses to Crowgirl for the beta!
> 
> This is also my 100th work posted to Ao3 which feels pretty awesome! Let's keep on writing the world as we wish it to be.

_"Let me," Crowley growls, leaning in, thigh pressed to Aziraphale's groin.  
"Let me show you just how much I want all of you."_

* * *

From their first touch under the apple tree at the heart of the Garden, Crowley has made Aziraphale acutely aware of his own form, his boundaries, his surface molecules: hot, cold, smooth, rough, soft, hard, dry, wet. The distance -- millimeters; solar systems -- between where Aziraphale ends and Crowley begins. Aziraphale has always felt as if he expands and contracts in space: flaring when Crowley slips into a room, collapsing when Crowley steps out again. The contours of his being have long ago ceased to make sense without Crowley to shape them: For centuries a word here, soft touch there. A subtle leaning in, followed by a reluctant pulling away. Added to these now a kiss here, a caress there. A cool body wrapped around his in the night.

At certain moments during the preceding millennia, Aziraphale’s response to Crowley felt so compelling that he’d been sure every sentient being in their proximity surely _knew_ this was the effect Crowley had upon him. And he’d _wanted_ them to. This afternoon -- to take the most recent example -- he had felt the urge to confide the wondrous news to every human, dog, bird, and insect they’d encountered on their walk back to the shop: _This is my beloved; when he touches me, it feels_ marvelous_. He has given me three orgasms already today._ He knows it isn't done -- certainly not among the humans in _England_ \-- but he had wanted to, very much.

Aziraphale wants Crowley to know this; to know both how long, and how deeply, Aziraphale has desired him; to know how much Aziraphale wants every atom in the universe to celebrate their union. But the words to convey this feel tangled up inside, all of his desires so densely interwoven he can't pick out a single thread to pull free and present. 

_Let me show you just how much I want all of you._

"Show me," he whispers, finally, pressing his face to Crowley's chest. "Show me."

Crowley curls around him, hands sliding down over Aziraphale's hips, along the backs of Aziraphale's thighs. Aziraphale allows himself be lifted in a sweep of wings and the scent of moss and rust that accompanies Crowley's acts of demonic power. Aziraphale wonders, as Crowley opens the front door of the flat, if any other being has been lifted with such care and transported to safety using the powers of hell. "Only me," he murmurs to himself as he crosses his ankles around the small of Crowley's back and his arms around Crowley's neck, feeling the air of _home_ eddy around them. The door to the flat _snicks_ closed behind them and Crowley carries him across the living room, then up the stairs to the second-floor bedroom.

It’s impossible that one sunset ago they had never even properly kissed. That one sunset ago Aziraphale had been uncertain if Crowley would want anything more than a shared meal, a shared evening, Aziraphale’s hands in his hair every now and then. Now he’s secure in the arms of a demon who wants so much more. As much, Aziraphale’s beginning to trust, as Aziraphale is able to give. As Crowley carries him across the threshold into the bedroom, Aziraphale presses his face against Crowley’s neck, lips to the soft, secret place behind Crowley's ear where Aziraphale has longed to kiss him for so many years. With his lips against Crowley’s skin, utter stillness descends just there: in his consciousness where yearning used to be and is now satisfied. 

He thinks about how it would be to whisper power against Crowley's skin: breathing, claiming, making sure no harm, ever again, came to this being if Aziraphale could move Heaven and Hell to prevent it. _Mine_. And the almost-too-much-to-bear knowledge that Crowley has promised the same: _None of them deserve you._ "Only me," he says again, against Crowley’s throat. "Only _you _."

"_Only_ me," Crowley affirms as he settles Aziraphale against the bed pillows with a care that makes the tears well up again. They aren't even tears of joy or sadness; they're simply tears of _everything_: of Aziraphale, overflowing. And of Crowley being there to catch and contain him. "My angel," Crowley says, soft, bending down to taste the salt against his cheeks. "_Look_ at you."

Aziraphale shakes his head: he can't. He won't. Instead, he looks at Crowley kneeling above him. Crowley still in his skinny jeans and band t-shirt, silk scarf incongruously draped at his throat, the ridiculous bright slashes of green and gold in his auburn hair. It's still spiked with the styling gel, smushed to one side as if he'd taken his nap in human form. He looks like a glam rock wannabe (Aziraphale, for all his teasing, _was_ awake and conscious of Crowley's taste through the late twentieth century). And within and around his familiar, beloved form swirls Crowley's … stormy energy. The energy of an angel transmuted by the Fall into a darkness that Aziraphale had been prepared by his superiors to find horrifying. Twisted. Grasping. But instead -- from that first encounter in the Garden -- had found ... beautiful. Breathtaking. Peaceful. Inviting.

He is so ...

"Aziraphale.” Crowley is considering him with the same piercing gaze of the serpent who had pinned an angel to a tree just by _looking_. “Tell me."

"I _want_," Aziraphale manages, screwing his eyes closed against the naked confession. His basic flaw: "I have always wanted this. Wanted you. So, so much."

Even with his eyes shut, Aziraphale feels Crowley bend over him. The temperature drops as if a sudden tempest has swept away the heat of day. Aziraphale feels his lungs and more-than-lungs (the angelic essence of lungs) expand with sweet relief. He gasps in a breath and twists the duvet in his fingers. Crowley reaches down with cool, sure hands to untangle his fists. Slides his palms against Aziraphale's own and pushes their interlocked hands with infinite care up the mattress until he's holding Aziraphale's hands against the pillows just above his head.

Safe. Still. Cradled. Contained.

His lungs expand again.

"I could tell you a story," Crowley says, kneeling over him, breath cool against Aziraphale's prickling, tender skin. "About the first time I ever longed for you to want. Would you like me to do that?"

"Please," Aziraphale whispers against Crowley's lips. Crowley's energy whips around them and he feels a clinging mist on his cheeks. Not tears; this mist exists in the space of angelic wings and demonic storms. He keeps still and allows his forms, human and angelic, to adjust to this new world in which Crowley _knows_. Knows that Aziraphale wants, and wants him back. A world in which Crowley is offering to tell stories of his own desire.

"_Please_." He says it this time in angelic register, a voice he hasn't meant to use for fear of causing Crowley pain -- damage even -- but it slips out, called forth by the storm, and the full-being shudder Crowley gives in response is not pain. He presses another almost-kiss to Aziraphale's lips.

"On a summer morning, on the bank of the Eulæus, you turned your head to look at me. I saw every color in the universe captured and refracted in the dew of your hair." Crowley whispers the words, a low thunder rolling below the tones produced by his human vocal cords and the hiss of his forked tongue against Aziraphale's jaw.

Aziraphale arches into the touch. _Please._

"It was the first time I felt the ache of being near you," Crowley confesses. "So beautiful; infuriating. Unreachable.”

"I..." _remember that dawn. I am really nothing so special._ Aziraphale shakes his head but Crowley cuts off his protests with fingers pressed to his lips. Aziraphale lets his words go unspoken.

"I could tell you a story of the second time I wished for you to want me," Crowley murmurs. "Shall I?" He traces his fingers down Aziraphale's chin, throat, chest. Aziraphale's gray cardigan is gone. The rusty tang of lesser demonic energy manipulation. Aziraphale hopes the jumper is hanging over the back of the chair in the corner or in a heap on the floor. He'd be disappointed if it never returned.

"You most definitely should," he agrees, trying not to shrink from the broken, eager notes in his voice. No one here will punish him for joy.

"On a night over five thousand years ago," Crowley's mouth follows the path of his fingers. This time a stroke of his tongue at Aziraphale's throat, another burst of rust on a sharp inhale, and Aziraphale's shirt is gone. "We watched the northern lights together from the top of Leirhøi. You leaned your shoulder against mine and sang with the stars. I closed my eyes and imagined you were singing to me."

"I sang _about_ you," Aziraphale breathes, remembering that night. The velvet darkness around them, the way Crowley's eyes glowed like banked embers and the air seemed to grow still and even darker around him. Aziraphale had released his grace, weaving its tendrils through the darkness so dark it cradled even his ethereal self; absorbed him, enfolded him, cherished him. It should have felt wrong. It should have horrified him. Left greasy, impure, _residue_ all over him. Not only touching -- but touching a _demon_. Touching _the serpent_. But nothing about it felt wrong. Nothing about Crowley had ever felt _wrong_ and that was the real, terrifying nature of the thing, wasn't it?

"I didn't know, then, that my song was about you," he whispers. "But I think the stars knew."

Crowley lets out a hiss at the confession Aziraphale gives to the storm-air around them. His exhale burns like ice against Aziraphale's skin as his mouth moves downward, the final layer between his lips and Aziraphale's chest vanishing in thanks. Aziraphale no longer cares where his clothing is removing _to_, only that it is _gone_. Being unwrapped by Crowley is fast becoming his favorite way to disrobe. If they continue like this, dressing in the morning could become an agonizing promise that Crowley will soon reverse the process.

"The third time," Crowley groans against Aziraphale's breast, the nub of Aziraphale’s nipple peaked to attention between his teeth. "The third time was when I realized you always said it _Crowley_."

"It's your _name_," Aziraphale says, opening his eyes in confusion.

Crowley is naked now, as is Aziraphale, and Aziraphale is dimly aware of the sheen of arousal springing up on his skin like human sweat. Leaky. Embarrassing. _Too much_. He remembers how mortifying it had been, the first time it happened: Standing in a market in Damascus with a book of poetry by Rumi in his hands. Something about the frontispiece, an illustration of Rumi and his lover Shams, made him think of Crowley. The way the two men were turned toward one another, the intimacy of touch, the sense that they were caught up in a private conversation that would never reach its end.

_The real beloved is that one who is unique,_  
_who is your beginning and your end._  
_ When you find that one, _  
_ you'll no longer expect anything else: _  
_ that is both the manifest and the mystery._

He had closed the book scarcely breathing, abrim with new knowledge, and looked down to find his body slick with more than sweat. An opalescence on exposed skin that shimmered in the late afternoon sun. He'd panicked: Had he finally had one unforgivable thought too many? Was this an early sign of discorporation? Was it some sort of angelic plague caused by too-human desire? He'd had no one to ask; it would have been something else for Gabriel to add to his list of ways Aziraphale was a disappointing and unseemly underling, lacking in self discipline, unwilling or unable to eradicate responses to the world -- to Crowley, particularly -- that an angel shouldn’t be having in the first place.

Crowley is neither offended by or disappointed in the way Aziraphale’s form responds to him. He's on his belly now, between Aziraphale's legs, lips close to -- but not yet touching -- Aziraphale's very human parts. He rubs his cool cheek against Aziraphale's inner thigh and when he lifts his head to meet Aziraphale's gaze, there's a smear of the stuff against his cheek. Aziraphale flushes hot at how deeply, possessively the sight of it twists in his gut. _Mine_.

"It _is_ my name," Crowley agrees. "Do you know how many people forget that?"

_Crawly_. Aziraphale remembers it as a sneer.

He shakes his head.

"_Everyone_," Crowley says. "Everyone but you. I'm forgettable, Aziraphale, it's who I'm supposed to be. Demons aren't supposed to be memorable. Get in, do the job, and leave. Everyone sins without quite remembering how."

Aziraphale is shaking his head. "You're...you're _impossible_ to forget."

Crowley gives him a pitying look. "You're the only being who has _ever_ thought that." He digs his fingers into the flesh of Aziraphale's hips and pushes his face close against the crease of Aziraphale's groin. Nose pressed to the pale curls at the base of Aziraphale's cock he inhales noisily, deliberately.

"The fourth."

Aziraphale lifts his hips, seeking more contact. Crowley pushes him back down to the mattress. "The fourth time," he says, ruthlessly. "You picked up the body of a snake that had been crushed beneath the wheel of a cart and brought it back to life."

* * *

_A bright, clear autumn day in a forest deep in the Gansu province, China. Aziraphale steps to the side of the road to let an ox cart pass and sees the tiny snake dart from beneath a mulberry bush, slithering into the roadway just in time to be crushed by the rear wheel of the cart. Aziraphale is on his knees before even thinking what he means to do, stroking his left index finger along the tiny, broken body. The snake convulses on the warm earth, returned to life. It twines itself around Aziraphale's fingers, across his hand to his wrist, where it clings as he carries it across the road to the dense undergrowth on the far side. <<Look at that nice rock,>> he whispers to it as he lowers it to the earth. <<Warm from the sun. Go, my friend, and be careful of the roadway.>>_

_He turns to find Crowley, suddenly and unexpectedly there, leaning against the trunk of a nearby ginkgo tree and watching him from behind shaded lenses. Aziraphale wonders how long he’s been watching -- why he is here at all? Aziraphale had last seen him in Nanjing at midsummer._

_"Why bother?" Crowley asks._

_"Why bother?" Aziraphale echoes back, unable to parse the question._

_"The snake." Crowley waves a hand toward the wood behind Aziraphale where, presumably, the snake is curled happily upon its rock. It’s a good rock, Aziraphale had noticed as he put the snake down: warm and mossy, with enough sun to keep it warm but enough sheltering greenery to protect the tiny snake from predators looking down from above. "It was just a snake."_

_"It was a_ being_," Aziraphale points out. "It was injured, I was here, I could heal it. So I did."_

_"Because you ‘could,’ " Crowley scoffs. "How do you know it _deserved_ a miracle?"_

_At this point, Aziraphale has spent several millennia working up a tolerance for Crowley's baiting words and refuses to ruffle his feathers at the question of how his superiors would calculate the miraculous worth of an individual snake. That isn't the point. At least not for him. And anyway, this particular miracle probably won’t make it into his report -- fewer and fewer incidents wherein Crowley appeared did, these days._

_"Let me show you," he offers instead. He holds out a hand to Crowley who, after a long pause, steps into the sunshine to accept it. Crowley's fingers are cool in his palm, reminiscent of the skin of the small snake he had so recently held and released. Aziraphale tugs, slightly, to bring Crowley closer and then turns to lead him through the tall grass and ferns to the rock where -- indeed -- the resurrected snake is coiled, content and drowsy in the dappled sun. It raises its head at their approach, but registers _friend_ instead of _enemy_ and doesn’t dart away._

_"Miracles are not about deserving," Aziraphale says, stooping to ask permission of the snake and then lifting the little one into his hands once more. He turns to Crowley who, startled, holds out his hands to receive. "Miracles," Aziraphale murmurs, watching Crowley's dear face as he cradles the snake in his palms. "Miracles are about observing and sharing the wonders of the universe. Miracles are about making sure every being is gifted with more than Angels _or_ Demons believe they deserve. Because God is greater, and more bountiful, than any of us can know."_

_"Besides," Aziraphale leans forward just slightly, his forehead nearly touching Crowley's as Crowley bends to speak to the snake in his hands. "This little one reminded me of another snake of whom I'm rather fond." Crowley stills and Aziraphale wonders if he has been too ... bold. He knows that their three thousand twenty one days six hours seventeen minutes and thirty eight seconds of friendship hasn't exactly been what their superiors had planned but surely by now he and Crowley have a mutual ... understanding?_

_They stand silently in the glade, heads bent together as if in prayer over the little snake now writhing happily in Crowley's palms. Aziraphale doesn’t understand what Crowley whispers to it in snake; whatever it is, he seems to have made the snake joyful. Maybe that’s just the effect of being near Crowley, he thinks. He’s assumed for many centuries that such feelings are unique to himself -- but perhaps he's been watching the reactions of the wrong beings._

_Eventually, Crowley shakes his head as if responding to some unspoken thought of his own and says, "Well." Then turns away from Aziraphale and walks over to the rock to let the snake go._

* * *

“I thought --" Aziraphale isn't actually sure, now, _what_ the Aziraphale of 1373 BCE had made of that shared moment over the snake. His memories of the past are entangled, now, with his present understanding: Crowley stroking deft, long-fingered hands down his thighs, Crowley's unearthly rain cooling his cheeks. It feels strange, suddenly and completely, to be confronted with the notion that his past self had ever imagined _fond_ could encompass the vast ocean of love he has for Crowley. And though it's been less than a single day, this new reality of Crowley's body against his with no layers between, it feels as though it has always been thus. How could there have been a time when he hesitated to even _suggest_ this was what he wanted?

"I have _always_," Crowley says, crawling back up Aziraphale's front until he can catch Aziraphale's mouth with his own. "I have always wanted _everything_ you wished to give."

Aziraphale thinks of the 1720s, most of which Crowley spent hiding from him. The days turned to weeks turned to years of waiting. All he had known was that Crowley was not discorporate. That he remained on earth. And so Aziraphale had waited. It had felt important to wait. If Crowley had needed him to -- but no. He would have known. And so he respected the distance Crowley had put between them.

Beneath the floorboards of this room there's a book full of everything he had wished to share with Crowley during that long absence.

_Today I saw a frock coat you would have liked, my dear._

_The rain this afternoon smelled of the spring we spent in Marrakesh._

_I miss you, my dear. I have no one with whom to share this excellent bottle of Chianti._

_I attended a concert this evening. You would have enjoyed the mezzo soprano. She has sung in Paris, in Vienna. I wonder if you've heard her._

_I dreamt last night you had returned and awoke weeping._

_I have touched myself, as humans do, and thought of you._

The pages, dense with cross writing. Tiny letters shaped in solitude. A chronicle of loneliness. 

Of vigil.

Aziraphale reaches up to push his fingers through Crowley's hair, feeling the way even the short, gel-stiff strands reach for him. Crowley's knees bracket his hips and Aziraphale feels Crowley's body slick and open against his erection. They're rocking against one another almost lazily; it's nearly unbearable and yet Aziraphale thinks _we could stay here for millennia_.

"All of you, Aziraphale," Crowley says, quietly, the truth of it in his unsettled eyes, in the clinging strands of his hair, in the press of his hips, the scent of damp slate and deep green moss rising up around them. Crowley is covered in Aziraphale's desire: messy and glorious and wanting even _more_. "I want your everything."

"I once wrote a book about how much I want you," Aziraphale admits, pushing himself up into Crowley's weight above him. "Only God knows how many pages there truly are. I filled it twice over, and twice over again waiting for you."

"Read it to me," Crowley says, panting, against Aziraphale's lips. "Read it to me. I want every word." He lifts himself up and reaches down between them to take Aziraphale in hand, then slide down to pull him inside: _safe. Home._ Aziraphale grips Crowley’s hair hard as they come together, feeling Crowley stretch to contain him, muscles rippling outward from the point of joining.

Aziraphale feels his wings straining to break through into the now. His whole being wants to expand, his human dimensions tight, pleasureable constraint. Crowley urging him toward release with the inrush and ebbtide of his own power, pleasure, desire, _want_ flowing around them.

They cease speaking for a time after that. Surrounding them, between them, through them is the crackle of electric-storm power and the scent of entwined grace. Aziraphale shimmers, leaking pleasure, and Crowley -- above him, around him -- absorbs it all. Aziraphale closes his physical eyes to focus his other senses on how it all _feels_: Crowley's cool skin against his own; the contrast of the heat where he's held by the clench of Crowley's internal muscles, the slick slide and the friction, inside and out; the way Crowley's hair continues to tangle with his fingers; the small mewling sounds that Crowley makes -- vibrations, really, that Aziraphale feels against his tongue and teeth -- when Aziraphale tugs, just a little, and then a little more, at the hair that's lengthening in his hands, tangling around his wrists. The serpentine shudders of Crowley's body. The way everything feels tighter, tighter, impossibly tight, until the burst of release.

Crowley comes shaking and nearly silent in Aziraphale's arms, as the storm-static of his power crackles along the shadowy spines of his wings. Aziraphale breathes a surely-blasphemous benediction against Crowley's temple in thanks to God that he is allowed this existence with this being whom he loves and who -- against everything they have been taught in Hell or Heaven -- loves him.

The sun outside is setting; Aziraphale feels the horizon rolling inexorably forward across the surface of the earth. He listens to their human heartbeats, slow, the inhale and exhale of air into and out of their lungs. His back prickles with sweat, his shoulders itchy from cramped wings. Crowley is slumped on top of him, body limp, face mushed between Aziraphale's neck and the pillow.

Aziraphale shifts his hips slightly beneath the weight of post-coital Crowley and feels himself slip free from Crowley's body. Bodily fluids are cooling and turning a bit tacky and unpleasant. He's gathered that showers are the pleasurable solution to this situation for most humans ... but perhaps another time. He runs a thumbnail lightly up Crowley's spine-scales and cleans them both up with a quick blessing.

Crowley shivers in appreciation and tucks himself even more closely around Aziraphale. This is _lovely_, a loose-limbed closeness, a carelessness of boundaries. Crowley nuzzling against Aziraphale's neck, Aziraphale turning his head to inhale the scent of himself and Crowley together in the now-quiescent hair that curls behind Crowley's ear and across the pillows. Aziraphale thinks with a flood of affection and contentment that they could remain entangled like this _forever_. They have so many hours of not-this to make up for. It would be bliss.

He thinks, not for the first time, about what might frighten the Host about particular attachments. That he understands them to be frightened at all is a new insight. He has never thought of himself as particularly frightening, certainly not to his superiors. They were just disappointed in him. But he thinks, pulling Crowley closer against his side, that he and Crowley together are at least a _bit_ frightening. There is a particular power, in being an _us_. A power that led him all those years ago to stop quoting Crowley verbatim in his reports. A power that led them to defy Hell and Heaven both and _win_.

And now that he has a lover -- _this_ lover -- Aziraphale knows there will be no going back to meek apologies and promises to do better next time. He knows what he'd be giving up, _whom_ he'd be giving up, and he simply won't. And he doesn't think the denizens of either Heaven or Hell are in a position to press the issue at the moment.

By the time they decide to start paying attention again he and Crowley will be ready to remind them just how powerful wanting -- and being wanted -- can be.

**Author's Note:**

> Crowgirl wrote a sweet bit of fic from the little snake's point of view! See link below. <3
> 
> The lines from Rumi are pulled from [this translation](https://www.khamush.com/love_poems.html#%22I%20am%20only%20the%20house%20of%20your%20beloved).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Object Lesson](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20110423) by [Crowgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl)


End file.
